Glenda and Nick the World Champion Beer Pong Player!!

• Let’s not forget laundry day at the hotel using the bathtub.

Washerwoman

Jersey Junction

Nick, Beer Pong Champ, will be competing for the East Coast Beer Pong Title in–guess where??  East Hanover, NJ at Miami Mike’s Sportszone on Route 10, 11/2-11/4.  This will be big!  Check it out sports fans!!  Go Nick from St. Louis.  Best wishes to Nick and his doubles partner!

Theme of the Day: Winning and losing

Up next: Bryce Canyon National Park, UT

• Once in Bryce we took in the NPS film, got a stamp (natch) and the lay of the land.  It might snow tomorrow which could make our hiking interesting.

Jersey Junction

None today.  Too much time in the car.

Theme of the Day: Rain, rain go away.

Up next: Explore Bryce

• The afternoon hike was along the rim of the canyon, way up to Inspiration Point, about 2 miles. The weather for this hike was clear and cold. All told, we took 177 pictures. Here they are, scroll away 🙂

Bryce Ampitheatre

• Just in case you think everything has been going so smoothly, we would like to revisit the lost (temporarily) and found issues we were having about 2 weeks ago.  Here is a list of things we have lost (temporarily) and happily recovered again.  (The last few days have been particularly challenging on this front) : Glenda’s flashlight; Glenda’s cell phone; Glenda’s head lamp (yes she has one, hikers!!); Sue’s camera charger; Sue’s camera card reader; Glenda’s purse; Sue’s reading glasses; Glenda’s sunglasses.

Glenda modeling her head lamp (thanks, Di!)

• Up early this morning we thought we would catch the sunrise but Bryce was cloudy and snowy so no good sunrise to be seen.  We headed south to the Grand Canyon.  En route we changed our original plan and thought we would go to the North Rim first and then on to the South Rim where we had hotel reservations.  The only problem was we didn’t know the time zone changed from Mountain time in Utah to Pacific time in Arizona.  Add to that our general map issues and so our estimated 4.5 hour trip became more like 6-7 driving hours.  Oh well.

Dark clouds on the horizon…

What else do you need???

• At the North Rim we walked a short distance to Bright Angel Point for spectacular views.  Sue has never been to the Grand Canyon..it’s HUGE!

North Rim

Also the North Rim

• Now onto the South Rim which seemed like just  few short miles away….210 actually.  We were now in Navajo Nation and stopped at a few roadside Navajo crafts/jewelry stands.  We each found something to buy.

Tiffany’s west?

Vermillion Cliffs from the car

• Finally we made it along the South Rim for more spectacular canyon views and even caught the sun setting against some of the canyon walls.

Watchtower at Desert View – South Rim

Sue inside the Watchtower

South Rim

• We were not able to get a hotel in the Park so we are  in a motel- a real throwback and full of Japanese tourists.  The dinner menu reminded us both of some of our local childhood diners or family restaurants with fruit cup,  minute steak etc.  Here is Glenda’s spaghetti dinner:
  

  Toast and a radish accompanied the pasta!

Jacob, Park Ranger, and Sue

At a roadside Navajo Vendor/viewpoint we ran into a young woman wearing a Drew Softball t-shirt. Yes, she is the assistant softball coach at Drew University in Madison, just down the road from Sue (shout out to Carol and Andrea..Go Rangers!!).  She is on vacation after their Fall ball practice and before the season starts in the Spring.  She is from North Plainfield.  We Jersey people get around!

Theme of the Day: Big Rocks

Up next: Monument Valley, Utah

p.s.  We just realized that over the last 5 days we have been in temperatures ranging from 103 (Death Valley) to 33 (Bryce).  Thus the BIG suitcases!!

• Next on our way to Monument Valley and The View Hotel in the Navajo Nation.  We weren’t sure what to expect as we traveled again through the middle of nowhere.  We noticed in the Navajo Nation that there were many octagonal/round buildings/huts mixed into the communities with houses and trailers.  Glenda researched in the passenger seat and discovered that these are called hogans — Navajo homes — round to represent Father Sun, Mother Earth, Sister Moon and the circle of life (brothers Rand, Pete and Steve take notice, bros don’t count…sorry).  Some of the hogans were also sweat lodges for meditative/ceremonial purposes. Some look like round garages, made of wood like some kind of garage or shed next to the house.  Maybe the grandparents live there?  Here are pictures of the mud hogan the ceremonial/sweat lodge type.  Pictures of your regular old hogans to come.

• Monument Valley is _________ (insert your own superlative here).  This was the scene, apparently, of many old westerns featuring John Wayne etc.  As a matter of fact, our hotel is showing one of those old westerns on the side of the building right now.  We arrived just in time for the sunset, perfect time for shooting pics.

Monument Valley at Sunset

 

• A note about our fellow travelers.  We have seen, of course, many Americans along the way.  But for the non-American tourists, we have seen the following:   Niagara Falls – East Indians; Yellowstone – Chinese; Death Valley – French; Swedish bikers; Grand Canyon and Monument Valley – Japanese; Germans everywhere as well as our fellow AARP members. HA!!

Jersey Junction

Elba helped us shopping at the Hopi House on the South Rim.  She is Puerto Rican, originally from Spanish Harlem Manhattan.  And although she has lived out west here in Arizona and California for a long time, she is still a New Yorker at heart and….her cousins are in South Brunswick, NJ (close enough).  Thanks Elba!!

Theme of the Day: Giddeeyup!

Up Next: Moab, UT  Arches National Park

• At breakfast we were approached by a Navajo tour guide who encouraged us to take his tour. And after thinking about it, we agreed. So we signed up for a 2.5 hour jeep tour along the bumpy, dirt roads in the Navajo Nation to view the various monuments. Here’s what we learned from our guide Brian:

1. The Navajo people refer to themselves as Dineh, meaning human.
2. The round houses are, indeed, called hogans and Brian himself (now age 38) grew up in one. The round hogans are female, the cone-shaped ones are male. But families can live in either style.
3. Navajos believe in the duality of life and everything has a male and female aspect.
4. Brian, as a child, was sent away to school from Kindergarten through 4th grade as the reservation did not have its own school. After his 4th grade year a public school opened on his reservation.
5. The Navajo Nation has its own president and elected officials like our Congress, Senate, etc. They also vote in the U.S. elections. If they work on the reservation the don’t pay federal or state taxes; if they work off the reservation they pay federal taxes. In either case, the Navajo Nation has recently imposed some taxes of its own.
6. Here in Monument Valley, many of the Navajo live in traditional hogans without running water. They have to travel to town to get their water. 

Brian, our guide, performing a drum solo

• We toured the Valley and saw and photographed many of the natural stone monuments here. Brian had a lot of insight into setting up our photos. All of the monuments had a name based on what they looked like or figures that could be seen in the stones.

Framed monument

• What a great tour! We definitely recommend it – specifically Monument Valley Safari. Next, on our way to Moab for more of the Utah National Parks.

• Dinner at a local brewery in Moab – Monday night football on the TVs. The patrons at the bar are mostly sporty mountain men and a few mountain women mixed in. We notice a certain facial hairstyle on some of the lads – kind of like an extra soul patch or extra long and thin Van Dyke. Does anyone know what this is? Do we have this in Jersey?

Landscape Arch

Delicate Arch

Hi Glenda!

Delicate Arch in the background

• As with the other areas, many of the rock formations are named after their shape or what they look like.  Here are some pictures of rock formations with their names:

The Three Gossips

Balanced Rock

Courthouse

Windows

And here are some that we have named:

Mr. and Mrs. Gnome

Weebils

?

• Another great landscape, another great day, another day of laughs!!

The debate

watching the debate

Theme of the Day: Landscapes – Political and Natural

Up Next: Hotchkiss, CO

Leroux Creek Inn

BBQ joint

Local brews

•  Back at the B&B, Yvon and Joanna were hosting 2 couples for a culinary event. They toured local vineyards and farms to buy the ingredients and come back to the B&B to cook a meal under the guidance of chef Yvon. We participated in the wine hour before they sat down to dinner. Pat & Jim, from Denver by way of TX, Cheryl from CT with her partner Tim from England. A really festive night for all, drinking the  B&B’s wine.

Cathya with some of her beautiful hand-dyed scarves

Jim and Pat

A visit to Dr. Yellow

• But Glenda can still walk and trooper that she is, she was ready for a hike.  We had breakfast and watched as people came to pick the grapes at the B & B vineyard.

Grapes!!

The vines

Jessica and Emily, the pickers

Action shot

• We drove to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Gunnison National Park.  A stamp!!!!  And a hike to a view at the edge of the rim.

Black Canyon

• Later we stopped by Glenda’s friend Dan’s house here in Hotchkiss where her other friends Chuck and Inken were visiting for a fishing weekend.  A beautiful, contemporary, NY architect designed-house sitting on 200 acres with the Gunnison River running through it.  Sue tried her hand at fishing with no success but Chuck reeled in a big one!!

Dan’s House

Inken and Glenda walking back from fishing

Yay!!

• We had a raucous dinner party at some guy’s house where he has a brick pizza oven and makes pizza for one group only in a room in his house.  Dan and Eve brought all the snacks, beverages and side dishes and Joe the pizza guy made the pizzas fresh in his oven.  The beverages were flowing and we had a long discussion about shooting guns which Sue desperately wants to do but might be too scared to try.  Joe apparently has many firearms of all kinds to shoot all kinds of things.  Hmmmmmm.

Pizza Party

Glenda, Sue and Dan’s guest Teddy

Jersey Junction

Dan grew up in Red Bank, NJ a full-fledged Jersey Boy!!  His friend Eve, a Phille girl, spent her childhood summers at the Jersey Shore.

Eve and Dan – Jersey People

Theme of the day: Colorado Outdoor Life, Hikin’, Fishin’, Huntin’ (for a doctor)

Up next: Pueblo, CO

Not sure yet how to pronounce this state…Col o rahdo or Col o rado…like Nevada.  Anyone know???

 

Goin’ fishing!

Potatoes

Potatoes and trout for dinner sound good to us!

• On the road, we thought, to Pueblo. We drove on Route 50 through the Monarch Pass (elevation 11,300+). We think this is the highest we’ve been. It was dicey.

Sue at the pass

Naked Aspens

Mountain view from the road

Roadside attraction – world’s biggest rocker

• Drove through Canon City, home to 4 maximum security prisons, housing a couple of notorious criminals including: Ted Kaczynski, Oklahoma bomber Terry Nichols, the shoe-bomber and more.

Unabomber home

• Driving along, Glenda found a different possible destination in our book – Manitou Springs, CO. So here we are. Our motel/cabin is vintage quirky 1950’s. A couple of sketchy motel-mates are a cabin or two away from us.

Reception

• Manitou Springs has several springs, like Saratoga, and it turns out the town is a cute, western, friendly, funky town with a good vibe. We like it.

Sue at the well

Jersey Junction

A new couple checked into the B&B last night and we talked to them at breakfast. Sue was surrounded by Bell Heads! Our couple both worked for the Bell System in the past and spent a few of those Bell years in Homdel, Matawan, and Freehold. They are from Nebraska and the land of wide open spaces. They thought NJ was a little too crowded for them.

Theme of the Day: Leaving the mountains behind…

Next Up: Dodge City, KS